A Viva! investigation reveals most pigs are
crammed in disease-ridden, indoor units where they live in their own
filth. A cocktail of drugs keeps them alive and forces fast growth. Please
help us end the suffering.

I once had idyllic childhood
images of pigs - happy, content and wallowing in a mud pool. When I
recently saw what life is really like for pigs on today's farms, I
was left feeling physically sick for days. I suppose I knew they
lived on concrete, indoors in intensive factory farms.

However, I was not prepared for
the intensity of their confinement, the awful reality of their
boredom, the noises their heads make hitting the doors to their
cages and the overwhelming smell they have to endure. It's been a
while since I saw those pigs, but thinking about it still upsets me
deeply.

The females
are left in what are called gestation crates, where they
are surrounded by metal bars and can barely move - they can't walk,
turn around or even lie down comfortably. Pregnant sows are kept in
these prisons for most of their lives - four months at a time for
the duration of each pregnancy. Their only relief is occasionally
being moved to another metal-barred prison (where they give birth
and feed their young), or when they are waiting to be impregnated
again.

In the gestation shed, there was a constant clanging
noise. It was the sows hitting their heads against the doors of
their cages as if trying to escape. After a while, some would give
up and lie down, while others again took up their futile action. All
I could think of when I left the place was that these poor animals
would remain there, probably for years to come, rotating between the
two types of prison, for the rest of their lives.

A sow gives birth in a
farrowing crate where she is again denied nearly all movement and is
forced to provide her piglets with milk 24 hours a day. I saw charts
on the wall that reduced her life to a series of statistics - the
number of piglets she had, how many lived, and how many died. I
knew that when those statistics showed a lowered production, the sow
herself would be killed. In a more natural environment, her adorable
little piglets would endlessly explore, play with one another and
root in the ground. Here they could do none of these things and
slept on grated metal flooring.

I also saw the fattening pens
where pigs are fattened up for slaughter. They are essentially
concrete cells, each holding about a dozen pigs. In one cell, a pig
had an ear missing. Another had a rupture the size of a
grapefruit protruding from his stomach. There was a dead pig,
constantly nudged and licked by his cell mates. The smell in these
places is overwhelming. I had the option of walking away and I
still cannot imagine how these poor animals - who have an acute
sense of smell - can endure the stench. I know what has happened
elsewhere - pigs have asphyxiated because the ventilation system
failed.

What I saw was the obvious
squalor and pain of intensive farming. Sadly, there is other, less
obvious suffering. In time, the legs of breeding sows become weak,
affecting their ability to give birth naturally and to walk. On some
farms, workers have been known to viciously beat these weakened
animals to get them to move from breeding areas to slaughter. Sows
are being pushed to their biological limits, and mortality rates are
increasing. Some herds have reported monthly mortality rates
exceeding 15%.

Piglets can be forcibly weaned
starting at two weeks old - two months before they're ready. Their
tails are cut off to minimize tail-biting, which results from the
unnatural environment. Their needle sharp teeth are clipped to
prevent biting in such an intensive environment, and notches are cut
in their ears for identification purposes. All these procedures are
done without painkillers. Death accompanies them at every stage of
their short, five or six month life. Up to 70 percent of some herds
may suffer from respiratory problems and a number of other diseases.
On the farms of one huge producer, 420,000 hogs a year died
prematurely. These losses are built into the economics of pig
farming.

Animals may not even survive
the transport to slaughter - dying from heat stroke or freezing to
death, depending on the time of year. In 1998, nearly 277,000 pigs
were dead on arrival at the slaughterhouse. The story
doesn't even end here. Many pigs are inadequately stunned. Some
are merely paralyzed and can feel all that happens to them during
slaughter. Pigs have even been known to enter the scalding tank
fully conscious and are essentially boiled alive.

Through all the misery I
witnessed on my investigation, I still saw a little of the pigs of
my childhood. Pigs whose ears flopped when they ran to me, hoping I
had food; pigs whose eyes seemed to reflect the misery of their
lives; sows whose intelligence shone through the hopelessness of
their frustration. But what will remain with me forever is the sound
of desperate pigs banging their heads against immovable doors and
their constant and repeated biting at the prison bars that held them
captive. This, I now know, is a sign of mental collapse. What has
happened to the human race that it can close it eyes to this
suffering?

I also visited some of the
larger pig farms in North Carolina. There were thousands of pigs
housed in sheds. Many were dead or dying - one actually died right
in front of me. This was the same for the piglets being housed
in what the industry so frightfully terms a nursery! The dying
and dead pigs were still in the pens with the living
pigs.

A revealing insight on how this
industry views animals is offered by its treatment of the dead and
dying. They were tossed in the aisles: some barely alive, some
rotting. Sick or injured pigs who were still alive could not
reach food or water and were sure to die a painful death. There
was a pig so thin he barely looked like a pig at all. He too had
some type of rupture protruding from his stomach; in addition to
this, his ribs were showing. He was in desperate need of
veterinary care, but apparently none was being provided - if he was
being monitored by anyone at all. Viva! needs your support.